I want to sign the white house
petition to give clemency to Edward Snowden, but I don't. I am afraid. I am precisely what the government wants me to be; paralyzed with fear. I know with certainty that public support for a prominent figure which my government has declared a traitorous criminal and political enemy of the United States, could definitely have consequences later.
Remember back in the 1950s when McCarthy and other drunkards went on a wild snipe-hunt rampage against artists and intellectuals because critical thinking was a communist conspiracy? Of course you do. They've made movies about it. Didn't George Clooney do one? The cretins dug around in garbage bins and blackmailed confessions out of junkies to hunt down free thinkers and critics of The American Way.
So it's not so farfetched somewhere down the line I could be declared a terror-loving, non-combatant Enemy of the State and rounded up (if not droned on sight) and sent to one of them FEMA camps patrolled by black helicopters and be made to iron the bedsheets for the nearby Holiday Inn Express where all the families stay when they visit all us enemies of the state encamped in detention for exercising our suppressed and illegal inalienable right to think for ourselves.
There is a big chill in the air when citizens are afraid to be citizens because if they act they know they might become targets of prosecution for not going along to get along. Unless we do something against the criminal conspiracy (influence peddling) which is the United States Government, then we'll have to admit the “America People” are not exceptional at all. People are easily cowed by the power of God – “God giveth and God taketh away.” To go against God – or its equivalent in realpolitik, the 'government' of the United States, is to invite yourself to lose everything you have: job, property, freedom. Resistance is futile against God, so most people go along with the smiting.
God and Government have only one commandment: Obey.
Edward Snowden, with his naïve belief that one person can make a difference, downloaded to the world a jaw-dropping dystopian nightmare which would find the blessed Orwell's mouth agape.
Chelsea Manning revealed military war crimes and diplomatic arrogance which embarrassed the “government” so they threw Manning in prison under torturous conditions, gave him a show trial and put him in prison for the next 35 years.
What Snowden revealed makes Manning's dump look like fraternity pranks and what happens when the morally bankrupt military actively recruits right-wing Christian nut-jobs to fight against towel-heads and camel jockeys because it's just so much easier slaughtering people when the rules of engagement are “kill them all and let God sort it out.”
There is no way Edward Snowden can be given clemency if Manning rots in prison. If Snowden gets a whistleblower pass, then what about all the other whistleblowers? Are we to take a whistleblower holiday and encourage other whistleblowers to reveal, oh say, our secret-doomsday-space-weapons-program for instance, and usher in an era of truth and reconciliation? Did you just get off the bus from Colorado?
The moral authority of the government of the United States is in tatters. A gang of profiteers, installed into power by a faulty Supreme Court in a close election, took the collective 911 grief of the American People and twisted it into a cynical war of vengeance against “terrorists” who are everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Obama was elected, in large part, by the hope people had by 2008 to get the disastrous wars behind us and restore some order to the financial system which resembles more a Ponzi-scheme-house-of-cards than a structure built to foster the common good.
But alas, Obama chose to perpetuate the myth of 'terror' and didn't lead the cause for any meaningful change to the reprehensible financial system which has privatized and profitized money and enslaved the world to debt.
So our war continues to spread, leaving desolation in its wake. Our markets are poised for another crash. Our politicians dicker over how much of my Social Security account will be stolen by the government to pay for the status quo of war and pillage and if I say something against what they are doing or call Edward Snowden a hero who not only shouldn't be persecuted but given the Key to the Country - it goes into my file.
We all have a file. And in that file is the metadata of our lives. And all it takes to turn all that data into a prosecutable crime is a push of a button. Do I have an illegal download, Kimye's sex tape, an ongoing conversation with radicals, atheists, socialists and satirists? Are some of my Facebook friends Code-Pink or part of Anonymous? Did they turn my camera on when I was picking my nose? We might be safe for now. But not for long.
There is a big chill over “America.” The emperor and his minions have no clothes. Snowden has stripped them bare. The people see this clear as day but are afraid to speak and act and throw the bums out.
And what if another Pearl Harbor, er, uh, 911 happens again because won't that prove 'terror' is real and we must sacrifice everything to fight it? Like fascism, communism, zombies and aliens? Cheney said if there was a 1% chance the windmill was really a terrorist, then we had to fight it. So here we are the longest war later, fighting windmills and chasing profit because if “capitalism” doesn't expand its markets then it collapses because it can't pay the interest on the debt accrued to finance its expansion. Our leaders are clearly deluded. They believe they wear the finest gowns and their farts don't smell. They believe their special knowledge and wisdom gives them the right to rule and decide what is best for everyone else. And see what they have wrought and reaped with their expertise and vision? A civilization of pyramid schemes and the cynicism of “forever war.”
And we are the enemy; the dupes, the rubes, the suckers and detritus – the collateral damage on their yellow brick road to glory.
Well, by gumbo, Edward Snowden deserves our support. He is a hero. His act of conscience tore the curtain away from the Wizard for us all to see a scared, tiny, befuddled and bewildered little man who hasn't learned a thing since “The Russians are coming, The Russians are coming.”
So let them put it in my file, and persecute me later after the collapse when Cruz and Palin are in power. I am going to sign that damn petition. It's the least I can do for Edward Snowden after all he's done for me.